To Kill A Mockingbird

•Harper Lee

•The Scottsboro Trials

Background on Harper Lee

• Largely autobiographical and like her character, Boo Radley, Lee has had one moment of notoriety, followed by years of privacy and silence.

• born is Monroeville, Alabama, April 28, 1926

• Third youngest of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Finch (surname of mom is the family name of the main characters).

Family life:

• Atticus Finch (main character) modeled after father, Amasa (lawyer).

• Maycomb, the setting in To Kill A Mockingbird is modeled after her hometown, Monroeville, Alabama.

• Grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s - much like Scout (narrator).

Childhood:

• “Nobody had any money. We didn’t have toys…so the result was that we lived in our imagination most of the time.”

• Childhood playmate - Truman Capote (Dill is modeled after him).

• Although she loved writing, she had a passion for law.

Schooling:

• Graduated public school, attended Huntington College and the University of Alabama. Went to Oxford University - exchange student.

• Lee never earned law degree, but she feels that studying law gave her a logic and a lucidity helpful in her writing.

• Settled in New York City - worked as an airline reservation clerk.

How did the story originate?

• Showed “some tales of her childhood” to a literary agent, who urged her to put together a novel.

• Events such as the Scottsboro Trials

• Thus - To Kill A Mockingbird: Published in 1960.

Awards and Achievements

• Best seller

• Pulitzer Prize for fiction

• Selected by both the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club

• Alabama Library Association Award

• National Conference of Christians and Jews Brotherhood Award

• Has a place amongst the great works in contemporary American literature.

• Made into an Academy Award winning movie in 1963

• Ranks #34 on AFI all time movie list.

What has she done since?

• Never published a novel again.

• Kept writing essays for magazines like McCall’s and Vogue.

• Self described as a slow writer.

• It may be a summation of Lee’s life that she has found nothing else to write about.

The Scottsboro Trials

• March 25, 1931: Police stop Southern Railroad train in Paint Rock, Alabama.

• Scottsboro boys are arrested on charges of assault. Rape charges are added against all nine boys after accusations are made by Victoria Price and Ruby Bates.

• The two women are underage; older one is a prostitute.

• Both smuggling and trying to avoid problems.

The Scottsboro Trials

• Oldest was 19; youngest was 12.• Within one month of the first trial, the first African-

American is sentenced to death. Others condemned.• Jury ignored evidence; wanted execution versus life

imprisonment.• None of the accused were executed.• Central figure was second trial Judge Horton who

postponed trials and set aside a conviction contrary to public outcry.

• Not until 1977 was the case finally settled.

The Scottsboro Boys

• Charles Weems• Clarence Norris• Andy Wright• Ozie Powell• Olen Montgomery

• Eugene Williams• Willie Roberson• Roy Wright• Haywood Patterson